


live my days in darkness

by dustofwarfare



Category: Kuroshitsuji | Black Butler
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-21
Updated: 2014-09-21
Packaged: 2018-02-18 08:02:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2341070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dustofwarfare/pseuds/dustofwarfare
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ciel Phantomhive used to be afraid of monsters that lived in the dark. Then he became one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	live my days in darkness

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Blood of Angels" by Brown Bird, which is an amazing Ciel song and you should check it out! I like this lyric particularly:
> 
>   
> _for all my spite_  
>  I might never win the fight  
> but I will rage against the light forever more. 
> 
> I continue to be fascinated by demon!Sebastian and evil!Ciel. Ugh. I can't help it :(
> 
>  

**live my days in darkness**

Ciel huddles in the back of the cage, forehead pressing against his arm, wondering how bad it will hurt to die. 

Will the knife be worse than the fire he so barely escaped? How long will it take, will it be quick or slow? He should want to die like his parents, suffer the same fate, the same agony. But he doesn’t. 

There is no comfort in the notion that at least he will join his parents in the afterlife, because Ciel no longer believes there is one. No promise of paradise is worth the hell his life on earth has become, and any god that would allow it is not worth one second of worship. 

Even if he _does_ see his parents when it is all over, all he will feel is the sting of his failure; that they died and he did not, that instead of avenging their cursed name, all Ciel Phantomhive managed to do was die like a lamb led to the slaughter.

Ciel does not know why his tormentors, with their mad grins and fever-bright eyes, wish to construct such a brutal end to his young life. All he knows is that it is imminent, and though he tells himself to be brave and fight and not scream, not cry or plead like the others…

He is all of ten years old, and he is afraid; of the pain, of death, of the knife he can see glinting in the candlelight. He is also _angry_ , and the sound that escapes him as he is dragged to the altar, still blood-stained from those who went before him, is one of pure, unadulterated _hate_. 

Those heartless nobles who are gathered, men and women driven by _ennui_ to seek sick thrills in the death of children, mock his pain and laugh at his screams. The rage that Ciel feels so fiercely escapes his small body in naught but shrill shrieks, and the sound is drowned by the crowd’s rising excitement, by the blood that chokes him as the knife tears through his flesh. 

The pain is worse than anything Ciel has ever felt -- it is the physical manifestation of every nightmare, of seeing his parents dead and burned, of smelling the smoke from the fire in his hair while he waited in a cage to die. And worse still is the haze that is beginning to fall, the dull roar like the sea he can hear in his ears, the knowledge that death is coming and even though it means an end to the pain, _Ciel does not want to die_ , not here, not like this. 

There is nothing he can do, his struggles weaken further and the blood loss is taking its toll, the sounds are becoming tinny and far away and Ciel is going to die choking on his own blood, still whimpering, still calling for someone, _anyone_ , to save him. 

On the periphery of his fading vision, Ciel sees something lurking beyond the altar. Death is so very close now, luring him with sweet promises of an end to his suffering, but Ciel resists and focuses instead on the pain, holds fast to it as he tries to make sense of what he’s seeing taking shape in the shadows. 

With the last of his strength, Ciel lifts one trembling hand in supplication -- and the thing in the dark reaches out, and takes hold. 

* * * 

When Ciel is six years old, he is taken from the small nursery in which he’s spent the whole of his life thus far, and moved to his very own bedroom. 

It is a fairly large room for such a small child; daunting, with the large four-poster bed and the giant windows, the furniture that is too tall for Ciel to reach. It is a count’s room, his father tells him. Befitting a future earl. 

But Ciel does not feel like a count, or a future earl. He feels like a scared little boy who is convinced there are things that want to eat him under his bed, that there are monsters hiding in the shadows beyond the fire’s light. And he refuses to sleep there, finding his way either to his parents’ room or, more often than not, back to the nursery; here, the bed is easier to climb, it is familiar, and the corners are far less vast and home to far fewer shadows. 

The earl and his countess try to convince their young son that there is nothing to be feared in the dark; that it is a gentle thing, that it brings quiet, and rest, and the sweetness of dreams. 

But Ciel is not convinced, and his bed remains empty. 

That’s when they give him the dog. 

“You are to be his master,” his father says, as the dog bounds up happily on the bed, all but tackling the small boy in its enthusiasm for being allowed on the furniture. “Dogs are very loyal. He will stay by your side, and guard you, and chase away anything that tries to harm you.” 

Ciel looks up at his father, considering this. “What is his name?” he asks, reaching out and patting the dog gingerly on its head. 

“Sebastian,” his father says, smiling. 

“Sebastian,” says Ciel, and buries his little face in the dog’s soft fur. After a few moments, he asks his father, “And you promise he will keep the monsters away?” 

“I promise,” the earl says easily, and leans down to kiss Ciel on the forehead. He hugs him close and bids his son good night, smiling as he hears his son say, _you will stay here with me until morning, Sebastian._

From that night on the dog sleeps in Ciel’s room, and Ciel, trusting Sebastian to keep him safe, sleeps there, too. 

* * *  
The demon -- _his_ demon -- slays Ciel’s tormentors with unhurried, effortless grace. Ciel, held fast and safe in its arms, watches it all. 

Some try to run, some fall on their knees in supplication, one woman even rips off her robes and throws herself in front of the demon, face twisted in maniacal reverence as she offers _take me, take my body, oh glorious fiend of Hell!_

The demon does not spare her a glance, so he does not see her face shift from ecstatic rapture into horrified pain as he sinks a claw into her stomach and disembowels her. 

Ciel sees. Ciel sees, and he _revels_ , and he is suffused with a strange sensation he does not understand. He thinks maybe he’s happy, but happiness has never felt like this before. Happiness is a thing he feels in the sunshine, playing with Lizzie and having a picnic in soft green grass -- happiness is not supposed to be all sharp and tingly, is not supposed to make him feel like he’s been cold for too long and just climbed into the bath, the water hot enough to hurt a little while it dispels the chill. 

The demon, not yet comfortable in his new form, smiles at Ciel with too many teeth, eyes as round as circles and sparking with hellfire. He laughs, and the sound is unpleasant like a fork scraping against one of Ciel’s mother’s fine china plates. “Ah, that a small thing such as you harbors enough hatred to summon me, and yet remains so innocent...” the demon breathes, all sly-eyed and smug, as if he knows something Ciel does not. “Your soul shall be most delicious indeed, my young master.” 

Ciel ignores him, for he could care less about his soul, all he cares about is seeing the spilled blood of those who came to watch him die. He points at the man who had, moments ago, raised the knife aloft and held it there in a gesture of demented showmanship, letting it catch the light, turning it this way and that so that he might drag out the moment before he ripped Ciel apart like so much meat. 

The man who is crying now, blubbering like a child, snot pouring from his nose as his stained hands reach up in supplication. “Please --” he begs, on his knees, and Ciel knows that the crimson on the man’s raised hands is his blood, and is eager to enact some showmanship of his own. 

_Now it is your turn to hear the screams of those who have gone before you, and dread the end that waits._

“I want him alive,” Ciel says, simply to watch the hope flare up in the man’s expression -- so that the horror of what is to come will be that much worse. “But make it so he can’t walk, and then set this place on fire. I want to hear him scream while he’s burning.” 

His demon smiles in pleasure, a sight that raises the hackles on Ciel’s neck and sends that strange happiness sparking through him again, like tinder newly-struck by a match. “Yes, my lord.” 

If having a soul means there really is a God, and a Heaven in which He dwells….then Ciel is glad his fate is to be devoured by a demon. He does not want to answer for the things he will do to see his vengeance done, or the joy he will take in doing them. 

* * * 

“Where did you come from?” Ciel asks, hours later, held fast in his demon’s arms. He is covered in blood and ash, but the demon has nary a spot on his impeccable black livery. 

The demon’s face is as blank as a slab of smooth, finished marble. “The dark,” he says, and his clarion voice is ageless, endless like the night sky above. His eyes gleam like stars. 

They do not speak again until the sun is rising, until Ciel finally asks the name of the creature who saved him. 

“Whatever my master wishes,” the demon says, with a horrible thing that is supposed to be a smile curving across his mouth. 

_And you promise he will keep the monsters away?_

_I promise._

“Sebastian,” says Ciel. “Your name is Sebastian.” 

* * *  
In the cage, Ciel used to dream about his bedroom and the soft, warm duvet of goose down under which he used to sleep. 

In his dreams his mother and father kissed him goodnight, his faithful dog slept at the foot of his bed and his governess woke him with a cheerful smile and his morning tea. 

But the light that spilled in through his window burned orange and red and white, his dog was a rotted corpse with blood in its fur and his tea tasted of ashes. Ciel would wake up stiff and sore, dirty and hungry, the cold metal of the shackle biting bruises into his tender skin. 

Dreams were just another torment, another torture he was forced to endure. 

His bedroom is, like the rest of the manor, _wrong_ in ways that Ciel cannot explain; the angles are too sharp, doors are off-centered, and a few of the windows are empty spaces of _nothing_ , gaping holes in the otherwise elegant facade of his home. 

It is disconcerting, but it is good to remember that none of this is real; this is not a house built by bricks and mortar, but by despair and black magic. 

This house is nothing but a tomb. 

* * * 

Ciel is spread out beneath his devil, writhing as Sebastian whispers profane, filthy things in his ear.

_I’m going to fuck you, my young master, so very hard….yes, that’s it, I’m going to bury myself inside of you so deep that I taste myself when I consume your soul--_. 

“Tell me,” Ciel gasps, fingers digging hard into the shifting muscles of Sebastian’s shoulders. “Tell me what it will be like when you take my soul, demon.” 

Sebastian hisses, and there is a sound like wings beating in the dark. “Agony,” the demon says, almost reverently. His breath is cold against Ciel’s flushed skin, making the boy shiver in delight and torment. 

Everything about Sebastian is cold, from his body atop Ciel’s, to his cock moving deliciously inside of him, to his mouth teasing at the heated skin of Ciel’s neck. The only thing that burns is the crimson of his hellfire eyes, abyssal and bright as they watch Ciel fall apart. 

The pleasure is almost too much, making Ciel sink his small, sharp teeth into Sebastian’s shoulder to muffle his moans. Ever since that very first day, when Ciel watched Sebastian kill for him with beautiful, merciless ease….there has been no joy in his life that is not tinged with darkness, no pleasure untainted by damnation. 

* * * 

As a child, Ciel was afraid of the dark, of the monsters he was convinced lurked in the shadows waiting to devour him whole. 

And now he gives himself willingly to the worst monster of them all, and if there is anything Ciel Phantomhive is afraid of, it isn’t the dark. 

It’s the light.


End file.
